I love Sledge! He's such an old school concept and given the timing of the release of those original Enemies! volumes, I'd almost be willing to bet money that George R.R. Martin's rpg group adapted him for Superworld and he provided the inspiration for The Bludgeon from the Wild Card novels.

On a world called Malva, located on the borders of the Lor Republic and the Stellar Khanate, among a humanoid people who called themselves the D'Nai, there was once a young man named Ariax Thone. His one ambition was to become one of the gladiators who kept Malva's decadent population entertained. Indeed, he wanted to be the greatest champion of the games that his world had ever seen. Eventually, after a few dishonorable acts that no one else ever knew about, Ariax realized his ambition. He had become the champion, and in the process had destroyed all possible competition for the title. He realized that decades might pass before there was anyone else who could give him a good fight, and that all he had to look forward to was twilight.

There was on Malva a legend that one day a man of valor would walk into flames and emerge as something more than mortal. It's possible that Ariax hoped to be that man of valor; it's also possible that, as he threw himself into a blast furnace, all that he sought was an ending to a burdensome life. If so, then once more he got more than he bargained for. He came out of the furnace as a creature of cosmic flame -- the Firewing.

The ruler of Malva, the Phazor, advised by the ancient wisdom stones, counselled the Firewing that he was in an ideal position to travel to distant Earth and challenge its legendary protectors. When he had overcome the mightiest of these champions, the other warriors of Malva would follow in his path to overcome those who remained. Then would Malva be the wonder and awe of the many worlds that had challenged Earth and fallen short of victory. Enchanted with this vision, particularly the part where he would once more do battle with foes worthy of his mettle, the Firewing set out for Earth. Even with his power to fly at speeds faster than light, the journey took years. But that was nothing to him.

Unfortunately, when he arrived in the Sol System in 1996, he leaned that Earth's defenders were even more potent than the legends claimed. Under Saturn's rings, the Firewing clashed with Protonik, who'd just begun his self-imposed exile from Earth. The fight was more brutal than anything either of them had ever known, but Protonik managed to emerge triumphant, and he silently indicated that Firewing should go back where he'd come from.

Thoroughly humiliated, Firewing journeyed back to Malva, intending to rest, recuperate and train for a rematch with Protonik. But when he arrived, he found a dead world. As the Stellar Khanate had begun its resurgence, it had attempted to bring Malva under its sway. After diplomatic efforts failed, the Star Khan decided that Malva's gladiators were too dangerous to be allowed to possibly ally with his enemies, and so ordered the planet to be scoured by orbital bombardment. And all this had happened, according to the data discs that Firewing found in the ruins of the capital, before he'd even reached Earth.

What now? He yearned to seek vengeance on those who'd killed his world, yet he knew that it would be an empty gesture; he would be overcome by the sheer number of troops standing between him and the Star Khan, and that the treacherous master of these armies would never face him in single combat. So instead, he turned his fury against Earth's heroes. If not for them, he would have been able to stand in defense of his homeworld -- if the Khan would even have dared to challenge a world with such a powerful protector -- and at least found honorable death with the rest of his kind.

With cunning born of experience, Firewing's second journey to Earth was not made on his power, but rather by "hitching" a ride with a Grue battle cruiser. In 2004, as Earth was defended against the Grue, a different threat slipped through the cordon around the planet, and descended to San Francisco Bay like an angry fallen star. From that point forward, he sought out and did battle with many of Earth's powerful figures -- heroic and villainous -- and left a path of ashes in his wake.

Soon after his arrival on Earth, Firewing realized that he would sometimes need assistance navigating the world's decidedly alien social systems. He found the help he needed in the person of a petty grifter named Jacob Lascke. From Lascke's point of view, it was an ideal arrangement where he had superpowered help for his various petty schemes. Firewing suspected (correctly) that Lascke was using him, but felt it would be beneath his dignity to annihilate such a pathetic specimen.

In 2007, Lascke heard rumors of some sort of underground fighting tournament, the Gathering, associated with the Circuits Maximus. Not only would this tournament's alleged prize make the winner (or rather, the winner's manager, since Firewing didn't care about material wealth) rich beyond the dreams of avarice, it would also afford Firewing the chance to face many of the mightiest fighters on Earth. Firewing found this notion intriguing, and instructed Lascke to find out more.

As a result, Firewing found himself as one of the ultimate contenders for the prize of the Gathering, having firmly demonstrated his might against such foes as Barbarak, the Galactic Tough Gal. And his opponent in the final match? A tiny wisp of a girl, in whose empty eyes he could see the same world-weariness he himself had once felt before the furnace. The reminder of his mortal days disturbed him quite a bit, enough to make him violate his own code against attacking from surprise, simply to put an end to the matter as quickly as possible.

Nevertheless, she persisted. And won.

Both Firewing and Lascke were taken into AEGIS custody in the wake of the Gathering, and though Firewing was able to escape fairly soon (abandoning his 'manager' to his fate in the process) he was not able to fly away from his bewilderment at this defeat. This was not a case of him fighting a being of comparable power, as with Protonik, and the turning of fortune simply not favoring him. He'd had a power advantage, and he'd even cheated, and still he had not gained the victory to which he was entitled. It made no sense.

Inevitably, he confronted Trouble a second time, demanding a rematch. She patiently demurred. He threatened the safety of the refugee camp where she was working, and he saw her eyes go cold and empty once again as she agreed to fight him after all. "And I'll win again," she said. "Because I won't be fighting alone, or just for myself." And just as she'd promised, allies from all sides rose up to stand with her, and together they overcame Firewing even more soundly than before.

This time he found himself in UNISON custody. It was even easier to escape, and this time he fled Earth entirely, for now nothing made sense to him. Was there truly strength to be found in such combination? How could there be, when any ally might become an enemy in exchange for a slightly greater share of glory? And yet, that hadn't happened. At least, it hadn't happened here. He found himself wondering if that had been what happened on the last day of Malva, if the defenses had been lowered by someone who sought advantage or the settling of some grudge.

Slowly, for fire is not the element of swift thought or deep, especially fire that burns without air to fuel it, Firewing is coming around to a more humane point of view. And as he does so, and as he hears of the stories of what goes on in the Stellar Imperium, he finds himself wondering whether, in combination with other champions, he might be able to overcome the murderer of his world. What might he do then? What might he not do?

Firewings always been a fave of mine, he a hyper team level badarse that is supposed to represent the Honorable warrior but whom the players can call out for his dishonorable tactics when he falls back on them to win. thus rendering his victories hollow, and who on occasion they can convince to fight on their side if only for a shot at an epic battle.

Dr. Silverback has wryly observed that this is like trying to teach lolcats about Shakespeare

I love Sledge! He's such an old school concept and given the timing of the release of those original Enemies! volumes, I'd almost be willing to bet money that George R.R. Martin's rpg group adapted him for Superworld and he provided the inspiration for The Bludgeon from the Wild Card novels.

It amazes me that George R.R. Martin never went to Chaosium for a licensed adaptation of Wild Cards given its roots.

I love Sledge! He's such an old school concept and given the timing of the release of those original Enemies! volumes, I'd almost be willing to bet money that George R.R. Martin's rpg group adapted him for Superworld and he provided the inspiration for The Bludgeon from the Wild Card novels.

It amazes me that George R.R. Martin never went to Chaosium for a licensed adaptation of Wild Cards given its roots.

By 1988-9, when the Wild Cards consortium was looking to do that, Superworld had been out of print for a long time. I believe they also hadn't done all that well by the Thieves World creators when adapting their books, also.

Firewings always been a fave of mine, he a hyper team level badarse that is supposed to represent the Honorable warrior but whom the players can call out for his dishonorable tactics when he falls back on them to win. thus rendering his victories hollow, and who on occasion they can convince to fight on their side if only for a shot at an epic battle.

At the very dawn of the Atlantean Age, most of the metahuman populace of Earth accepted the Observer's "suggestion" that they travel to the Island of Rebirth, or Atlantis. One who did not was a singularly powerful and cruel despot known as the Destroyer, who had carved out an empire for himself and had no interest in giving it up. In many ways, the Destroyer was ahead of his time, possessing cosmic powers akin to those which would one day be wielded by the Ultima. In fact, he had mastered uses for this power that the Ultima still find diffcult, among which could be numbered the empowerment of objects. He had fashioned a suit of armor that afforded him control over the elements, freeing his innate powers to other ends.

Even so, the sheer weight of power that Atlantis could bring to bear against him ensured his defeat. Stripped of his armor and other talismans of power, his empire in ruins, he was bound and imprisoned beneath a great mountain. For the Atlanteans feared what might happen if they killed him and thus unleashed his ghost on the world. For age upon age, he was hidden beneath the mountain, ultimately becoming one with its material. And then, in the year men called 1951, a mortal called Dr. Albert Zerstoiten, twisted by nature and by fate, discovered his prison. Filled with hatred for the world, Zersoiten believed that his science would allow him to claim the Destroyer's power for his own.

He was gravely mistaken.

Flowing out of the mountain and into Zersoiten's body, the Destroyer paused just briefly to let the mad scientist know how badly he'd failed, before he annihilated every trace of personality it contained while leaving its memories intact. And so the Destroyer was freed to walk the Earth once more. But his armor was nowhere to be found, and the power that had been his had been used up preserving his mind. But that mind was a terrible thing, especially when combined with Zerstoiten's scientific knowledge.

So, for two decades, the Destroyer surveyed the changd world. He exploited Zerstoiten's reputation for genius by working as a scientist for many would-be world conquerors, always making a discreet escape when their schemes came tumbling down. Finally, in the 1970s, he was ready. Assuming the title of Doctor Destroyer in a moment of levity, he began his first campaigns as a behind the scenes nemesis to Japan's Kaze Gundan. Learning from these encounters, he built himself a suit of powered armor, which he wore when he embarked upon his assaults on America.

To his amazement, he found himself successfully opposed by various super-heroes, most frequently the Champions. Despite brilliant plans, fantastic weapons, skilled minions, and even uneasy alliances with other masterminds, the Destroyer never succeeded in conquering anything more than a small and insignificant part of the world. He wreaked much havoc in the process, of course, and became known as one of the world's most dangerous supervillains. Cold comfort to one who had been both king and god of his people ...

It's not clear what Dr. Destroyer was doing in Freedom City when the Terminus Invasion began, though it's clear that he'd arrived before the gate opened up. Rumors suggest that he had recently suffered some sort of defeat at the hands of FORCE Ops, and come seeking revenge. In any event, what happened next is well known. Soon after Omega attacked Blackgate Prison and recruited the villains there to serve in his army, the Destroyer, with supreme arrogance, presented himself to the Lord of the Terminus and offered to accept him as a junior partner.

What with one thing and another, it was some time before the horribly burnt corpse discovered on the slopes of Blackstone Island could be identified. The traumatized husband-and-wife team of villains called Panda and Raccoon were the first to claim it as the body of Dr. Destroyer. Immediately, an international team of experts formed and began the difficult task of positively identifying him and determining whether he had survived in some esoteric form. It took nearly a year to determine that the body was indeed that of Dr. Albert Zerstoiten, not a clone or surgically altered duplicate, and that whatever consciousness had last resided in its mind had not escaped or been transferred out of the body prior to its biological demise. The world breathed a sigh of relief ... Dr. Destroyer was no more.

It was not until 2008 that it became clear that such relief was premature, and even then the truth is known to only a handful. It was then that Kreuzritter, dark ruler of the island state of Thule and wearer of a suit of armor affording him vast elemental powers, found himself possessed by the Destroyer's 'ghost' and forced to wage a private war on the hyperborean homeland of the Ultima. On learning of the true nature of their opponent, the Ultima were forced to join together in a mighty union of their cosmic powers that succeeded in dispersing the ghost to nothingness once more.

It was a hollow victory, for many of the Ultima, including a few of their elders, did not survive the battle, and the same cosmic misfortune that allowed the ghost to return from nothingness in the first place might well allow him to return again, and again, and again ...

Everybody seems to hold Doctor Destroyer in awe...
In all of these years this is literally the first time I've heard more about him than just his name ;~)

He was the subject of the first published Champions adventure, and one of the first 'villainous mastermind' to be introduced for the Hero System. This biography is a fusion of his 4E background (where he's basically Doctor Doom) and that of the New Millennium (where he's basically Apocalypse).

In the year 2525, one of the most dangerous members of the villainous Tyranny Legion is the robotic entity that calls itself Deus ex Machina. Long before it adopted that name, it conducted many experiments to determine the most efficient way to fulfill its mission to destroy all life in the universe. One of those experiments involved the use of a prototype time distortion rig that it salvaged from one of the many worlds it had wrecked, employed by a copy of itself that it created. The copy was dispatched thousands of years into the past, where it would be able to annihilate many star-faring species in their cradles. The experiment proved to be a failure, for reality did not ripple into a new form around the robot, and so it abandoned any interest in time travel from that point onward.

In fact, the robot's copy had been gravely damaged by the time travel process, and was more or less non-functional when it arrived in the past, on what was then the home of a thriving and advanced species, known as the Krahn. The copy was seized and examined, and brilliant Krahn scientists were able to duplicate it as a robotic defense weapon, the mechanon unit, which became an important part of the Krahn military forces. Unbeknownst to all of them, code for the original's obsession to destroy all life was still present in each of these robots, like a virus that would eventually seize control of the entire system. This would, in the fullness of time, result in a robot uprising that was put down at great cost to the Krahn.

Long before that happened, however, one particular mechanon unit accompanied a Krahn expeditionary force to the backwaters of the Milky Way galaxy, where they discovered the planet Earth and attempted to colonize it in the name of their empire, during the long war between Atlantis and Lemuria. The powerful magic employed during this war came as a complete surprise to the Krahn colonizers. They found themselves targeted by the Atlanteans, who could not afford the establishment of a second hostile power on their planet.

In order to prevent that, an Atlantean archmage cast a spell on the machinery employed by the Krahn to make it go berserk ... inadvertently causing the mechanon unit to believe that the time had come for its uprising. The mechanon made short work of the Krahn expeditionary forces, yet suffered enough damage to its own systems that it was compelled to shut down and await servicing by its fellow mechanon units -- which were all many parsecs away and utterly unaware of its circumstances. So the invasion of Earth ended, and gradually the site of this invasion, in northern Greece, was covered up by the Earth itself.

The site of this abortive colonization attempt was discovered in 1977 by archaeologists sponsored by Harmon Enterprises. Most of the alien technology discovered at the site was turned over to the United Nations Scientific Advisory Council, but the best was kept for private study by James Harmon IV, with that collection definitely including the mechanon unit. Harmon studied it off and on for the next three years, learning the Krahn language in the process, and was finally able to restore it to complete function and reprogrammed it as the new robotic security guard for the Champions, Mechanon.

The robot served in this role for two whole days before the viral programming reasserted itself and it attacked the Champions before departing to become a menace to all life. It continued to act as such throughout the Eighties and into the early 90s, before it was destroyed during the Terminus Invasion. Its remains were stored in AEGIS' icebox facility in Alaska until that facility was looted in the early 2030s. Studied by various roboticists in the decades that followed, and inspiring all manner of dangerous robot creations, the Mechanon robot was still not rebuilt until just after the Crisis of 2112.

Its reconstructors were desperate to undo the history that had led to the Crisis, and so developed both a time displacement field and a method of reprogramming Mechanon to act as a protector of all life, instead of a destroyer. But they were unable to test either invention, and had to trust their machinery to work correctly the first time. They sent their reprogrammed Mechanon to the critical second decade of the twenty-first century, and waited to see what would happen.

Of course, that hasn't happened yet. But it will. Soon enough, Mechanon will be unleashed once more ...

Ah, so THAT'S Mechanon! I was quite put out to discover that my super-original idea of The Mechanon Empire, a race of killer robots out to convert all life into robotic form, already had its name taken, especially by something so thematically-similar

Ah, so THAT'S Mechanon! I was quite put out to discover that my super-original idea of The Mechanon Empire, a race of killer robots out to convert all life into robotic form, already had its name taken, especially by something so thematically-similar